A fond farewell to animator Hal Geer

Film
“Hal Geer, my great mentor at Warner Brothers Animation, has passed away at age 100,” writes Geer’s fellow animator Jack Enyart in a recent e-newsletter. As Enyart recalls, “I was in my 20s when Hal brought me into the department. On his desk, each time he faced me with his sly Bugs Bunny grin, rested ...

‘Pop’ goes the American Songbook, in Pasadena, under Feinstein baton 1

Film · Music
The Pasadena Symphony and POPS organization practiced what the Chinese call “double happiness” this week, announcing, in one fell swoop, the re-upping of conductor Michael Feinstein’s contract with the POPS (where he started in 2013) and the roll-out of a rich summer menu of American Songbook concerts at their bandshell digs in the Los Angeles ...

James Cagney studied ballet with Kosloff 5

Dance · Film
In my soon-published long essay, “Theodore Kosloff and Cecil B. DeMille Meet Madam Satan,”* I write as follows: James Cagney, too, studied ballet with Kosloff, or so the actor-hoofer let drop to the Los Angeles Times in January 1938. Cagney confessed that he was training for a pet project: playing Nijinsky in a bio-pic. (This ...